On Gaus' criticism of Berlin.

For readers who like this kind of stuff, I have uploaded a revised draft of my “Synthetic Philosophy: A restatement.” It now includes a new non-Darwinian example of synthetic philosophy. This is, by the way, my final week of blogging before my annual extended vacation-leave.

Many of the late Gerald (‘Jerry’) Gaus’ students are my regular interlocuters. A letter by one of these, John Thrasher (Chapman), nudged me into reading Gaus’ (2003) Contemporary Theories of Liberalism. This book provides both a critical introductory survey of the then status quo of public reason liberalism and the kinds of considerations that motivate it as well as advances the project by offering a contribution to it. It’s a rare feat to pull this off. And I have much to praise about the book. But today, I focus on an argument that I found less persuasive.

Early in the book Gaus (1952 – 2020) engages with a view ‘pluralistic liberalism’ that he attributes to Berlin. I put it like that for two reasons: first, because I myself would emphasize the agonistic features of Berlin’s view more than the potential incommensurabilities among values. And, second, as Gaus indicates, it is notoriously difficult to pin down what Berlin’s view really is.

In criticizing one of the possible formulations of Berlin’s position, Gaus advances a nice insight:

But whereas on the basic view I am doomed to reasonless choice, and so there is no reason to further inquire or deliberate on the nature and merits of the values, on the derivative view the incommensurability stems from the uncertainties, complexities and vagueness of my criteria. Therefore rational reflection, deliberation and inquiry are always relevant responses; I cannot know that further deliberation will not reveal the correct ranking. In the face of the incompleteness of our judgments, when we are confronted with a choice between values we cannot compare, the derivative analysis points to inquiry and reflection, not unreasoned acts of will, as the generally proper response. Indeed, if we regularly confront a choice between V1 and V2, it is most unlikely that we will continue to see them as incommensurable. Confronted by repeated choices, we will deliberate until we come to a settled decision about what to do. It is hard to imagine a person who frequently has to choose between V1 and V2 continuing to understand the options as incommensurable, about which her practical reason is silent. Thus while the derivative view can explain the incommensurability relation, it does not doom us to removing our most difficult value judgments from the realm of rational inquiry and deliberation, and so holds out the hope that we may exercise our intelligence and come to a better and more complete system of value judgments as a response to confronting incommensurable values.—p. 36

Let’s stipulate that there is an important grain of truth in Gaus’ argument here. Choice options that are frequent or repeated will force on individual agents a dominating preference that will be the consequence of rational reflection (etc.).

Of course, there are some decisions that are unlike the ones Gaus seems to suppose: these decisions tend to be dubbed as existential (viz. high stakes, one off) or transformative in L.A. Paul’s sense (viz. that change the agent in epistemic and personal ways that are difficult to foresee). Some decisions can be existential and transformative. As Gaus notes (pp 43-4), Berlin himself often treats humas as self-transformative (so I am not just being gimmicky here),

Now, luckily, even decisions that are existential and/or transformative to individuals, may well involve (third personal or first-person plural) social learning from the perspective of policy. So, the mere existence of first-person agential existential and/or transformative decisions need not block Gaus’ argument against the pluralist who conflates derivative and basic incommensurabilities.

But, of course, Berlin’s pluralism is not primarily interested in first-person agential decisions, but in the politics of (say) societies characterized by potential conflicts over values/end. And here it is by no means obvious we always get the right sort of repetition. This is difficult enough even in ordinary bread and butter social science (where values are often collapsed into measures that track only some course-grained element of a value).

But it is even harder in the kind of existential and/or transformative social decisions that may well be rather singular, and sometimes irreversible (as, say, in extinction of species due to human economic activity). And, more important (and the reason why I mention the class of ‘transformative’ experiences), it is incredibly difficult to guarantee continuity of social and political agency without introducing legal/political persona (sovereignty, the government, the administrative state, the electorate, etc.). Some of these are notoriously inconstant in character.

So, while I fully grant that Gaus is right to suggest that some or even many incommensurabilities are taken to be so because they are derivative in character, repetition of social choice can never be taken for granted when social decisions are existential or transformative in character (like going to war, etc.). This matters because Gaus wants to claim that when we are dealing with basic incommensurabilities these give rise to tragic choices (in cases of overcompleteness), and such choices Gaus wants to treat as the effect of the irrationality of the agent not the conflict in values (“the tragedy of such cases arises from the agent’s irrationality, not from the plurality of incommensurable values.” p. 40).

How has this happened? Let me quote the key passage from Gaus:

That is, if the agent has an overall evaluation such that A over B is the rational choice, then it must be a violation of rationality to chose B over A. But if both A > B and B > A, then whatever one does both is required and prohibited by reason. It is important to stress the contrast with incompleteness: whereas incompleteness tells us that each dimension gives us some reason to choose the option which ranks higher on that dimension, it insists that our inability to compare the dimensions shows that we do not have adequate reason for making a choice. In contrast, overcompleteness tells us that we have two overall evaluations, and so two competing adequate reasons.

I conclude that overcompleteness cannot be a feature of a rational system of values; it demonstrates the impossibility of a rational decision (between the relevant options). Benn seems quite right: when discovering such overcompleteness in his system of values, the rational agent adjusts his commitment to the various dimensions, at least to the extent that he no longer claims that both dimensions automatically yield overall rankings. Doing so, the agent comes to see the possibility of rational choices in situations in which he previously thought a rational decision was impossible. ‘That way, indeed, he adds inches to his stature as a rational decision maker, for then he is equipped to deal with further situations he could not have dealt with before.’ p. 38-9.

Let’s stipulate that something in the vicinity of this argument is true for individual decision-makers. We may say that even in tragic situations (that for good measure are existential and transformative in character), our decisions — however grounded they are — reveal and, perhaps, constitute our system of values (even if it is highly circumscribed by, say, oppressive circumstances or epistemic limitations). Our decisions are not merely the effect of our deliberations and wills, but also informative in character about our own rankings.

But when we move up a level from individual agents to social decision-making what Gaus calls ‘overcompleteness’ may be the effect of the existence of polarization or multiple social tribes/factions in society. And here a social decision is potentially not at all informative or constitutive, but better described as the imposition by the state or society of the most influential faction — maybe the majority — on the minority. And, in the politically salient context of tragic choices, it may well undermine the existence of the purported social agent, or lead to civil war. Think of the decision to elevate one system of values — or religion — to state monopoly.

It seems on Gaus’ view a social decision that undermines the continued existence of the social agent or breakdown of trust is, thus, by definition irrational. This may, in fact, be a feature of Gaus’ position. Because we wouldn’t want to encourage such breakdown.

Yet, another way of looking at Gaus’ argument is this: definitional consistency comes at the price of not even trying to accommodate the rivalrous nature of political life where the rivalry is the product of systemic overcompleteness. After all, lurking in Berlin’s position is the Weberian insight (that we also find in Hume and, especially, Adam Smith) that we should not press on the rationality or reasonableness of social decision-making too hard. (Recall my post on unreasonable pluralism.)

Berlin’s agonistic pluralism (that we also find in Lippmann and Mouffe) at least tries to accommodate that bit of hard-won (let’s call it ‘historical’) wisdom. It’s the kind of thought of one may reach from reflection on Gaus’ (2016) The Tyranny of the Ideal. Of course, how to make this position principled and not ad hoc is itself no simple matter.